First off: The introduction of real links in comments via the dofollow plugin has been a huge success, especially as I am ranking high for both “dofollow” and “dofollow plugin” in Google by now because my article about the end of conventional SEO was so popular and has been reprinted or translated numerous times including my “dofollow” link.
Dofollow encouraged participation substantially, moreover what most people do not mention in this context: It made this blog a really friendly place.
Commenters who also want a link rarely will offend you. So by far most coments are friendly, helpful and adding some new perspective, update or information. In short: People commenting on SEO 2.0 are truly contributing. In many cases I even rank for long tail queries that are found only in my comments.
Blogging is like inviting people to your barbecue party: They get invited and receive free food while you enjoy a nice get together.
I use Akismet for spam protection and thus have rarely problems with real spammers who let robots comment automatically on thousands of blogs. There are sometimes problems with false positives in case of people Akismet markes accidentally as spam. Aaron Wall of SEO book was flagged as spam by Akismet and one of my eager contributors david deangelo has been filtered time and again even after I made him a “member” of this blog. This is a bug that sucks but I will de-spam your comments if you contact me by email, my adress is onreact at onreact.com
Many people complain about so called “manual spam” which is an oxymoron in a way. Spam is an unsolicited message and if you allow comments (by people) you can’t call it spam in this case. Thus comments made by humans not robots are not spam in 99% of cases. Nonetheless some things annoy me too:
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People commenting with a name like “SEO Company” or “Real Estate California” because I want people to comment not companies or services, especially if the keywords have nothing to do with SEO or other topics of this blog.
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One liners saying something like “thanks, great article” because I don’t know if they are made by robots or not if they do not refer to the post.
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People who do not read the article but comment based on the title and it’s keywords because it’s just ridiculous to state “I also like three-way links” if I just wrote that I hate them.
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People using German or other non-English keywords as their “name” because it is impolite to exclude the majority of my readers who do not understand.
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Commenters linking to specific subpages like domain.com/my-new-product because I’m not your catalogue.
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People adding a signature in their comment because you already got a link, you don’t need a signature, that’s greedy.
- Commenters who disagree with me, because I never err you damn naysayers! ;-)
On good days I will just approve your comments, on normal days I will change your “name” to something which sounds actually like a name or remove your URL but on bad days I will spam your comment or delete it.
Spamming your comment means that you get flagged on other WordPress blogs too so you probably do not want to risk that.
There are easy solutions or exceptions for most of these cases where both you and I can live with them or they even add some additional value. Tim Nash, a SEO consultant from the UK has a nice technical solution implemented: He added an extra text box for your favorite anchor text. This is really neat but I’m too lazy to hack my WordPress comment form and thus I prefer the easiest solution, introduced in part by my favorite blog consultant, Michael Martine. He just combines two things, his name and his job description.
So check out these simple rules of blog commenting netiquette, they might not apply everywhere but they will help you not be thrown out at SEO 2.0 and in other places probably too.
- You can write: Michael Martine, Blog Consultant. You can also link to to an about page covering you. Also if you do not want to disclose your name or job position, you can even write something like Bob of Miller Real Estate or at least leave your initials to enable me to address you: AJ of Miller Real Estate but don’t write Miller Real Estate, AJ. Imagine being on a party again: You say your name first when you introduce yourself and then you tell people what you do for a living.
- I appreciate people being thankful for a post but unless your refer to the specific post or I know your blog URL I have no way of determining whether you are a bot or not. So write something like “thank your for the post, it helped me with …”
- If you want a piece of meat at a barbecue you don’t just drop in, take it and leave the party instantly. Stay for a minute to read the post, say “hi” and then leave.
- Do you speak German addressing people on a party where nobody understands it? Try to translate at least. So do not write Web design Köln, but Mark of Dom Web Webdesign in Cologne
- Imagine yourself on a party when asked about what you do for a living telling people, “Dirt Devil M110002!” So, as I said above, a page about you is OK, your homepage vacuumcleaners.com also but not a specific product page. Akismet will spam you in most cases you use subpages anyways.
- A barbecue party is not a trade fair, you do not wear your name plate on your lapel. You just introduce yourself, that’s enough. So skip the additional signature.
- Now imagine someone entering a barbecue party shouting: This place sucks, meat is murder, you dirty bastards stink! I guess such a person gets thrown out immediately. If you disagree, do it politely, with style after at least reading what this site is about. Of course I will delete trolls who offend me for all “SEOs being spammers“.
Did I forget something? Probably, feel free to add your take on the subject of blog commenting netiquette an barbecue parties in the comments below ;-) Introduce yourself and be nice to the other guest.
Related posts:
- Blog Commenting for SEO and Exposure: More Than Dofollow Links
- DoFollow: Spread Link Love
- Commenting on Dofollow-Blogs as a Link Building Strategy
- The Only 7 WordPress Plugins Business Bloggers Need
- The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
Need help? Consider a world class blog & SEO consultation by the author of SEO 2.0, Tad Chef. For full fledged SEO services like ongoing link building, contact my partners from SEO.com or look up my directory of SEO service providers and checkout reputable companies like Datadial or Redfly.
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This thing has 140 Comments
Your commenting netiquette list has some good common sense pieces of advice any commenter should follow on any blog.
What I’d add is “Add something to the conversation!”. Point #4 from the netiquette list is getting there, but I really think you need to add some value with your comment to show your not just there for a link.
I do relate to the part about commentators using a different language than the one you post in. It happens less often right now, but it was a real pain before to see comments in Romanian that other readers could not understand. I had no time to translate, so I replied in English, hoping i could also summarize the comment in Romanian. I also kindly asked those using Romanian to try English. it was obvious they knew the language if they understood the post :)
Paul: This is true but I do not expect anybody to do that much. In fact I want to keep it as low-threshold as possible. If someone is gracious s/he should be allowed to express it.
Alina: In my case I refer even to the sheer name, if it’s a German keyword it’s even more rude. Imagine someone from Germany coming to your party and not even saying his name.
This is JF at 365questions :
I noticed recently that I was receiving hand crafted spam almost everyday. Sometimes it was even a bit hard to know if it was even spam, (not when the guy’s name is “Property sale” obviously) like when it was coming from niche blogs with phony author profiles for example.
In doubt, I would let the comment go through but remove the link… And if the comment was just really no value, I would delete it.
Now I was wondering I might have appeared on a list of “do follow” blogs. I found some for sale, sorted by page rank. I Just couldn’t find one with my blog…
Anyway, when you don’t keep the link, they just stop coming ..)
I recently disabled the dofollow, and as a consequence now get less spam. Weird.
Spot on list there, especially like number 6 about the additional signature. They rile me those posters, and I never approve them.
Das ist ein sehr gut post yah! Danke fur das linken spielen.
No, seriously I think this is a great way to let people know that you have a policy in place to monitor comments and that you don’t mind rewarding useful contributions to your comments by sharing a little bit of link love for the effort. Of course that link juice is gonna get spread pretty thin once the word gets out and every Tom, Dick and Klaus starts dropping “Great barbeque!” comments all over you.
In reference to #5, personally, I don’t mind commentors leaving a deep link to a specific post instead of their homepage if it is relevant and not spammy. Sometimes people leave a legitimate comment and mention a related post they had written that is linked through their name. Regardless, your blog is your territory and you can do whatever the heck you want.
Test comment, lol.
I was just thinking of removing the nofollow attribute myself. It’s a vote of confidence to the readers, giving them something back for contributing. Of course, I’m not referring to one-liners or hit-you-in-the-face spam. I think people are steadily learning some good manners when it comes to leaving a comment on a dofollow blog.
I love all the comments I get from Russia, especially the one that threatened more comments from Russia if I didn’t pay him.
Great post. Spam is getting harder to detect, but these rules are a good start.
Thanks Paul. I notice that some bloggers will approve what appears to be “excerpt spam” (maybe it has some other name?) e.g. “…excerpt pulled from the same post…”
Is there some advantage to doing this? Apart from looking a little more popular? (until someone looks closely, of course)
Good point on the ‘heads up’ on Akismet. I do not have the time to check the hundreds of spam comments each day that Akismet catches. I’d better put an Akismet Ahead sign to warn worthy commenters that they should contact me if their comment is not published. I could be upsetting a lot of people that way. After all netiquette works both ways. I would not want to throw out some perfectly innocent person who wanders in to my free barbecue.
It really is like a barbeque and I must admit that I have more than once embarassed myself at a “barbeque”. So I think I’ll print out your 7 tidbits and pin them to the wall in hopes that I remember to read them before I “manually spam” the next half interesting blog I read.
Was just working on a post about proper way to leave comments when I saw this on Sphinn. You pretty much summed up my thoughts but you’re a lot nicer to most commenters than I have been. Printing this and using it a reference for my next post.
Nice BBQ. :)
On my blogs I have a simple rule: Your name is neither a real name, nor a nickname, nor the name of your website? -> I delete the link.
Hi – thanks for the great BBQ!
How could you not write a comment after this article?
I hope it is up to scratch and not spammy:)
I love this article! I have a DoFollow blog, and I can’t begin to tell you the amount of ridiculous spam comments.
I like the idea of having a DoFollow blog, and I’m not thinking of changing it anytime soon, but it’s just funny the kinds of things people try to slip past me thru comments…. which, I have on moderation, so it never works.
Great post!
This is one of the most common sense guides to netiquette (god, haven’t used that word in a long time) for commenting on dofollow blogs (or any blogs, really) that I’ve ever seen.
I love the BBQ party analogy. Unfortunately, there will always be a few people who just don’t get it, but at least a post like this might help clarify things for people who didn’t realize that they were spamming. I mean, most spammers know what they’re doing, but sometimes I think people just don’t know the “proper” way of doing things.
You posted what I have been saying for quite some time. I guess I should have beat you to it. Your post received much more attention than mine would have anyway.
Much Success!
JUST KIDDING! I couldn’t resist after reading your article. It’s got a lot of good points, but I can understand people who want to promote a site and keyword using their keyword as their anchor text. It doesn’t bother me, but when I look through your comments, it does look more real… not like the Google-Scape that screams at me from other sites.
You can change my name to meathead if you like, but I kind of liked crashing someone’s barbecue and spouting “Meat is Murder”.
Oh, I’m not a vegetarian.
I understand that there is a WordPress plugin that rewards people for being regular visitors to your blog and not one-off popins (like me… gulp…)
I cannot remember the name of it, but it is a little more flexible in that you can set how many comments someone must post before they get a ‘follow’ link.
Yeah, it’s the link love plugin. I know it, but I decided not to complicate the process and offer an incentive for new users to join the conversation.
For a professional site I’d suggest adding a new form field for your favoriute anchor text like Tim Nash did.
For me, as a part time blogger for fun, the way I handle it suffices.
I wonder if eventually Google will implement some algorithm that ignores blog comments and back links. Maybe it depends on how aggresive they become.
Regardless, allowing dofollow is great and encourages comments. The comments benefit the blog because it has the “bandwagon” appeal , so to speak.
An SEO expert told me that back links from blog comments will only make your page come up for unrelated queries.
They do help your page get found by google though!
Thanks for the great blog.
I think creating the nofollow attribute was the worst thing to ever hit the enter. Not only does it NOT curb SPAM it gives less encouragement for people to comment. I think it should be up to the discretion of the blogger whether to give follows or not to the comment poster.
But my name really IS Mr. Viagra Mesothelioma! And man, I really had a tough time growing up.
This is really a great plugin,
Well. Dofollow network helps webmasters and also blog owners for getting popularity,
I must say Blog commenter also helps blog owner and vice versa.
Great tips for SEO folks those are using blog comments as a link building technique, you really need to offer some value and be appreciated for the blog that you are commenting on.
What I dont link in blog commenting is that many blogers turn it into “nofollow”
after they get some exposure.
P.S. I hope my anchor will not annoy you :)
great post and i will try to follow your netiquittes as much as i can. and quite true
that spammers are breaking thw orld loose.
i had to stop posting for few days and take my blog offline to clean it off.
All of my blogs has a dofollow too since I noticed that it is indeed easy to get ‘meaningfull’ comments that are contributing to your post. Just above the comments box I have a big warning sign where I tell them i love to give them a clean link to their site..just asking to use their real name in return.
I think people need to see the other value (besides ankerteksts) of commenting on other blogs…establishing an expert stauts…
Dave
i wouldn’t be surprised if google eventually has its platton of hand editors systematically devalue all dofollow sites. its too much of a risk to their trillion dollar empire.
Was quite a useful article to read. Just recently my blog has started getting the steady trickle of spam. I just simply delete the spam comments, or remove spam links if the comment is reasonably useful.
Thanks for the article.;
To add my two canadian cents, I think SEOs put too much emphasis on anchor text. Maybe it used to work, but not anymore. Excessive repetition of anchor text probably gets dampened by Google. And for good reason, because natural anchor text won’t contain a huge % of same keyword phrases.
Also, Google seems to be heavily leaning in favour of domains with a history of importance (links going to any page on the domain). Sites are ranking with few or zero backlinks, for competitive keywords(!).
I’m sure the nofollow tag will affect the number of comments but i think a comment is a way of communication and not an incentive for the poster. In any case Google decides what is best for them and we simply can’t do anything about it. We just watch and learn to apply their rules. :-|
I happen to agree with Glenn, SEO experts focus too much of attention on the anchor text while dealing with link building. Google has altered it’s algorithms and you run the risk of being tagged as spam.
I’m sure it won’t be long before comment links are not counted by Google, it’s just too easy for exploitation. Some of the things I’ve seen people do just makes me shake my head, I’d wager 90% of the websites out there were created for no other intention but to add links that point to the legitimate pages. An enormous amount of time and energy is spent trying to game the system.
Wow, nice post! (what, was that bad?) J/K – I use dofollow links on my blog as well. It’s time we started spreading the link authority around on smaller blogs so that we can compete with the bigger brands in online marketing.
I don’t like using my real name and would not post at a site that requires it. I don’t spam blogs, I try to make meaningful comments, and I read not only the original post, but all the comments as well.
Of coure I am often looking for a link love, but there on some blogs I would post a comment without it.
I think it’s interesting that everyone involved with SEO (which I am myself in a very amateur way) thinks that people wouldn’t leave comments on blogs without some link juice flowing out. Of course, 99% of the people involved in social networking sites are really involved in the social networking aspect of it and the link love really doesn’t matter to them.
Also one poster above made a post that doesn’t make much sense to me. He talked about deleting SPAM comments, or if the comment was useful just deleting the link. If the comment was useful enough to leave, how could it be considered SPAM and why delete the link?
Thanks for the post, very nice.
Seriously though, Keyword Luv creates a symbiotic relationship. The blogger gets more comments (and therefore, more visits), and the commenter gets a one-way backlink.
When I post, I make a point of (a)reading the post, (b)writing something appropriate and of value to the discussion, and (c)not mentioning my business unless it is germane to the subject.
I also hate when people put their link in the body of their “comment” too. I mean, you already got a backlink, tied to your keyword and everything, so calm down.
I considered using Comment as well as Keyword Luv but it’s a little too much SEO and not enough value for the blogger. I’m undecided though, maybe I add it later on.
I’ve recently installed that plugin to make my blog dofollow too. It will be interesting to see what transpires.
Cheer for the informative article, I may also cover this topic soon.
I’ll be honest, I was dofollow, but switched it back to nofollow. The amount of manual spam (to use a phrase I know you don’t like) I got did reduce, but it’s still there.
I think it’s because I was featured on those ruddy “dofollow” list that do the rounds on digitalpoint etc. and people think “linkback linkback linkback!” and don’t care about the lack of SEO benefit….
Well, I know you don’t like the thanks posts, but thanks for this anyway. :P This totally is SEO 2.0, you are so right in calling it that. I really hope G stays cool with it, it would be a shame to loose this resource.
Thanks for the guidelines as well, more people need to read this!
I really think commenting in Do Follow blogs using Keywords is a waste of time because do follow bloggers moderate comments like hell and as you said if they mark the comments as spam, then askimet would likely mark comments from the same person on other blogs as spam as well. So, it’s better to settle with lesser link juice from do follow blogs than looking to infalte keyword authority by using keywords in the name field while commenting. But finding blogs like that of Tim Nash’s would be a good thing who want to use keywords.
And your list rocks, however, disagreeing politely may sound like an oxymoron to some hot headed people out there. :-)
P.S: I am not hot headed.
I found this article pretty valuable – it caused me to get Akismet working on my blog and think more about my nofollow policy. I guess I agree that well thought out comments should be followed, but there are so many brief pointless comments that it’s tempting to nofollow everything.
I really think that the purpose of commenting should be networking – after you network then write a guest post or something for a link. But this post has me reconsidering.
Happy Holidays!
Eric
I agree with this article 100%. There are definitely some bloggers who have joined the movement that do not have a handle on their comments. There are also a ton of spammers out there taking advantage of those blogs. I definitely think there should be some kind of netiquette used by all of those commenting, or it doesn’t work for anyone.
Yes My dear.. a proper commenting policy is needed in case of a do follow blog.. and you know what? daily am getting more than 10 comments from the ph@rm@ and other websites.. and some cheap travellers and all those stuffs.. blah!
Hi This really interesting post. I was not aware of some also the Commenters play good role to shared idea. Keep writing…
I was dofollow but was unable to manage food of spams that hit me,now I am nofollow
I like the way how your dofollow changes with keywords and names used in comments, can you tell how its been done, thanks
nice post! now a days forums posting and blog commenting is a specific way to increase targeted traffic for a site..
Hi 2 points i would like to make.
Firstly thanks for the advice its good to see how someone perceives comments on their site. This will help when making blog comments in the future.
Secondly I have been wondering whether to allow follow links on my blog. I have decided to do so and follow your methods. Only accept comments with proper names, no one liners, etc. I want to increase participation but i want the comments made to be meaningful.
See how it goes…
Good read, as a new learner of how to do the things you mention here. I appreciate your words of wisdom. A question that popped into my head is it ok/relevant to use your nickname. like I have here. Thanks again
worthread post .today blogging gets more importance to create more traffic to the website ,good job..
There are some great tips on this website. I like the idea of having a DoFollow blog, and I’m not thinking of changing it anytime soon, but it’s just funny the kinds of things people try to slip past me thru comments…. which, I have on moderation, so it never works.
To be serious, I am still confused. Look, why do you make a blog dofollow? Because you want to give linkbacks to your commentators which is a part of SEO. So when you do so, what’s the risk in giving the linkback in the form of the anchor text of their choice. Well how about KeywordLuv, that’s a pretty neat plugin giving both name and keyword with the link in the right place. Although I do hate those “Thanks a lot, just needed this” comments.
Abdulrehman: KeywordLuv focuses too much on the SEO value of blog commenting. Do not forget that commenting in blogs is for conversation and additional info. I can’t talk with you when your name is SEO company.
Hi, I can understand how dispointed you are about people using the dofollow links in your blog to seo purposes. I am SEO myself (in Germany) and believe me it´s everywhere the same problem. But I give with pleasure a follo link with the keyword as a name to people commenting regularly and relevant in my blog. Well it takes time to sort. Having a blog takes much time.
Great tips for any type of blog commenting etiquette, whether follow or nofollow. It’s too bad the spammers have to ruin it for everyone.
Hi Dude…this is really a awesome article. I always comment on do-follow blogs. Also, we should take not of the right conduct in posting comments.
I am reading this and thinking to myself, I am so guilty of doing all the above at times and that’s because I’ve never received proper training on leaving comments. I am so glad I ran into your article while doing a search for “dofollow”. Now, instead of a bunch of waste good comments I might get approve sometimes. Of course there are people who still hate mortgage or real estate commenting in which case I am doomed. Finally, I want to say thank you and I have stumbled your article because it’s that good.
Hey,
Thank you for posting a good article. I would have never gotten the hang of this commenting. I just wish more people would do the dofollow on their blogs and too bad we can’t kill all spammers.
If I may add please, on your Commenting Netiquette.
1. The number of characters in the URL”s vs. the actual text size of the comment. If URL size is greater than the comments, 100% sure this should be mark as spam.
Just my 2 cents.
-Martin
Thanks for this great article.
You convinced me to blog in do follow.
Hopefully the trend will take off and everybody will start doing that
Regards
This is the first Dofollow etiquette post I’ve found online. I appreciate your sharing it with us. You make some really valid points. What I find fascinating is some of your blog comments are Dofollow and some are Nofollow. Would you mind sharing how you are able to do this? Plugin? Thanks!
I’ve heard about Do Follow but was never tempted to use it. You’ve actually made it sound like something I should do.
I agree that it looks pretty ridiculous to have a long list of comments all saying “thanks”, “thanks for the info” etc.
If foreigners are trying to optimise for the name of their home town in their native language, though, that seems fair enough. I could easily happen to come from a small English village that no-one has heard of – wouldn’t that amount to the same thing as writing Koeln?
Have you considered using the dofollow trackbacks plugin? It seems more justified to me to reward those who link to you than those who comment. I’ve just installed it on my blog as a test.
Of course, it can be spammed just as much, but having to link to a post to gain a link should deter most spammers, and Akismet will catch the auto-generated sites.
Thanks for your comments. It’s always great to get out and meet new blogger. I learn more than I teach at these events and it’s always a great time.
I completely agree with you regarding your commenting rules and i respect them. I also have blog and some commenting rules almost similar to yours.They only difference between your rules and mines is i don’t mind if people use keywords in anchor text except their Name. I only hate comments saying nice post, great article etc.
DoFollow blogs are the best for addin comments and also to get the linkjuice to the site.
Thanks
These are some pretty good points, the main objective is to add something to the ongoing conversation.
You are right, commenting by human is not necessary spam, as long as the comment content is relevant to the topic was discuss above. But many people commenting for the sack of having a backlink with relevant keywords, this make people comment. Unless is really a dofollow blog comment like here :)
how to use trackbacks like 4 up there???
I was doing a search for “food dofollow blogs” and found this blog. Guess you ARE ranking well for dofollow. Keep up the good work.
I know this is an older post but I want to ask a question and hope for a response.
With the recent WP (and others) updates going nofollow by default, do you think it has affected your and others web traffic?
I believe that most bloggers honestly do not know they are now nofollow and don’t realize how much it has affected their traffic.
Thanks,
Bill
This is a great post, thanks for sharing …
No that’s not it :)
I am in the process of starting a blog and your post tipped the balance in favour of writing a netiquette encouraging people to join in and spammers to stay out :)
Thank you also for the heads up on akismet eagerness to block spam.
I am going to start a blog and was wondering if I should make it do-follow. Your tips on how to avoid spam will help me start a quality blog. Thanks
Hey,
Thank you for posting an interesting article. The way you explained commenting made sense.
Your insights into netiquettes are sincerely appreciated. I being a newbie to this blogging arena, it is nice to have insights from experienced bloggers like you. I would appreciate to learn more from you.
Great netiquette guide. I just got some problems with spam detectors, some human comments cant get through because they are mistaken as spams.
Great post. I usually put a tag like kris – the gift basket specialist for my name. I think that if people try and blog for seo purposes to try and actually find blogs you like and make comments that make sense. Then use an RSS feed reader like google’s to keep up to date on new posts. Damn those comment bots, damn them to robot hell!!
Great post, I agree that for the most part people really do contribute to online conversations. Even if part of the motive is to obtain some kind of link most still add good information to the internet!
I have no problems with having an etiquette for posting comments as if we want to have good links why not make a respectible comment too. So it takes a couple of minutes but we would all benefit and then we would not need so many plugins or whatever to capture spam. I guess we may never conquer spam but our blogs will benefit in leaps and bounds if we just follow some small rules.
Hi this is Darla aka Alrady and I think I have commented on your blog before. This posting IS great!
I found this doing research. I was researching netiquette for blog comments and seo. It puzzles me why so many people read a blog and then Do Not leave a comment. It seems like leaving a party, without saying goodbye to the hostess. Thanks for a great
posting that I can refer others to.
DARLA
I write for Ehow and now Examiner. People leave comments there but rarely on blogs or twitwall posts.
Spam can be served
Do follow does encourage more participation but needs a lot more moderation time. in terms of etiquette just treat people online as you would offline and you won’t go wrong.
I agree with your rules. I understand that some and perhaps even a lot of the commenters on my blogs are there to post their links, but this can still be a win win situation, if they only contribute to the conversation. All I ask is that it be a “quality” comment… yes it should contribute to the conversation topic, but it should also be of decent length. This is subjective, but it’s something I look for.
Some useful info there. I think its right that you should contribute to the blog that you post a link on in some way. There is nothing more anying that simple one word comments.
For me the do-follow is a win win. Google likes content so commenting on blogs and forums helps you attain page rank. Yahoo is even more generous so I figure to help my site the more I read and comment on the better. And as an added bonus I’m getting better at SEO and the do follow site gets more traffic.
This is a good idea to do an etiquette for posting comments on the blog but if everybody have a decent common sense this will be not needed. Unfortunately this is not the case so either you choose no follow to avoid spammers either you code do follow buy you have to moderate and sometime that is to much time consuming
Very sweet of you. I’m not a bot, I just really do have a short comment! So long as it’s not an overt, blatent plug with nothing to do with the post, I have no problem, so yes I agree with you!
Almost two years after it was originally posted, and your article is still drawing praise and comments!
I believe your article is so popular because your barbecue analogy is easy to understand, and all of your examples are friendly, logical guidelines. (I haven’t gotten any blog comments in German yet, but did get some in oriental characters.)
And I like the dofollow concept; it’s like giving back to your community.
Good stuff! Thank you.
Great article!
I do agree with you on many things. And I dont see the problem with a relevent comment on my page or somebody elses page that has do follow. It benefits both me and the person that has made / or got the comment.
Great blogg with good interesting information on it!
We have our own little (german) blog, its hard to get people to comment. On my personal (english) blog its much easier. I wonder if it has to do with german mentality? Anyway, you made me rethink my no-follow strategy. Good post ;)
your article is still drawing praise and comments!I think that if people try and blog for seo purposes to try and actually find blogs you like and make comments that make sense.
I really enjoyed your post, if you don’t mind, I may hack up your list of rules to use as a comment policy. If that’s OK with you, please let me know by email (you should have it from the comment)
This is really true. Many abusive bloggers are using any kinds of techniques just to get back links to their websites. It is important to play by the rules to earn the best results! BTW, thank you very much for this helpful information.
This is very much informative article, the tips are really superb. The main to increase the site traffic rather than one way or two way link exchange, is forum posting and blog comments of do follow. Thanks for sharing.. Keep on moving.
Your article is informative one. You have very much cleared the notes of comments. Even i have a blog, the person who is placing many links in the dots. So every time i just see it and delete it. They are making it a spam. Thanks for sharing your information.
This first time I visit your blog. I don’t really understand about SEO. But, What I know must have quantity of backlink from another blogs.
Best Regards From Indonesia.
Dofollow is the way to go. There are many good people with alot of interesting comments out there. With commenting you recieve as long as give every comment is a little bit of unique content to yourblog as long as it keeps to the topic. Thank you for this post.
Thanks for posting an interesting article. The way you explained commenting made sense.
Thanks for teaching us on this matter. I understand to be able to succeed well in link building is to connect with dofollow sites, thanks for the help!
So have you found that you get a lot more comments now (spam or meaningful?) considering that you appear for dofollow. As I must confess that’s exactly how I found you. That being said I have also bookmarked you so will come bak again, as your content is certainly better than average
Yes, Steve, I get quite a few comments, most of them spammy but compared to SEOptimise where nofollow is used there is not much difference.
People are spamming all blogs it seems. I mark most of them as spam.
As you see it’s not that difficult though to leave a meaningful comment and add something of value to the conversation.
i totally agreed with your terms and conditions. the comments must have some limitation.
but i like your blog and hope you can keep this work going.
I never thought that the comments might take the great role in SEO of my site. Ive read a lot about the dofollow comments and I was thinking about to allow such on my blog but I was afraid about the spamers and long hours on filtering all the comments. after reading your article here I’m starting to thinking more positively about dofollow links and maybe I will give it a try. BTW if every one read your articles the world of blogs would be much better place:D. Good Luck:)
Truth. Even though many times I am trying to get visibility I always take time to read the post and make an intelligent comment…or else I don’t post.
The thing I think is quite intriguing is while alot of spam is posted on dofollow blogs, the traffic it drives to the site and the frequency of new content seems to be favoured by google. So whilst alot of the comments are useless and throw-away, they can have a positive affect on the webpage in Google’s eyes.
Good article.
I agree with you on most of the things mentioned and I think as long as the comments are relevent, i.e people have taken the time to read the blog page, then I dont see the problem with do follow.
hmm.. This is the first time some webmaster has shown his inside feelings after enabling dofollow rel.. :) Well many of people just comment for the sake of backlink and few are genuine. Now its upto you how you classify them..However i like Barbecue Party analogy..Best of luck!!
Thanks for sharing such an informative post…. the concept of follow links is very well brought out…
whether follow or nofollow it’s meant for some thing useful for the users, but if some of them use for spamming purpose what can we do?
I stumbled on this old post by complete chance. I love the netiquette list. Catchy title btw; the BBQ part drew me in. Personally, #2 is a big one for me. It’s my own belief that if a blog author is kind enough to give you a backlink, at least be thankful for it by reading the blog and giving a real comment. One liners bug me and so does completely irrelevant comments.
Even though this post is over 2 years old, the netiquette still stands today (at least for me it does).
In my opinion the whole idea behind the internet was the free sharing of information. In other words, one site makes it easier for you to find the information you’re looking for. Whether it’s on their page or they are just linking to it. If the search engine bots are not able to find the information you’re linking to because they hit a “no follow” tag, then it defeats the purpose. On the other hand, it’s human nature to abuse a good thing so in some cases controls have to be put in place so that a commentor will not be linking your site to junk.
Interesting post. I see you limit commenter’s name length which has prevented me from posting as JJ Remington at My Online Business Strategy. Is it unreasonable to allow a legitamate comment/backlink the anchor text that makes it most effective?
All of my blogs has a dofollow too since I noticed that it is indeed easy to get ‘meaningfull’ comments that are contributing to your post.
I think the problem, is that alot of spammers have destroyed the do follow blogs for everyone. I know that each day i receive alot of spam to my own blog.
I like this part “Commenters who disagree with me, because I never err you damn naysayers!” – its so true. Once I read in Aaron Wall’s SEO training, that the blogosphere is just going to get more biased in the future. And he went on suggesting that to attract people’s attention when you create new blogs, it has to be very biased towards certain views or opinions. But I don’t think bluntly agreeing to everything will get your comments approved either, if the comment looks too suspicious, something like : “Mike from Free Hot Chocolate” as author name.
I get a tons of spammers on my blogs who write a small amount of text and then submit their URL. It’s a real shame that this happens but thats the nature i suppose of the internet :(
Hi, first of all, this is a great post on how to write proper blog comments. I just watched a video about commenting on blogs and they referred me to your post. It very helpful information and clears up how I should do my blog commenting and also why to do that way. I now also see why blog owners get so frustrated when your name is your keyword and you leave an additional link in the signature.
Very interesting post and has provided me with an insight into blog commenting and the way it SHOULD be deployed. From your article, it seems like a real win-win situation – as long as those silly spammers dont waste your time. A couple of points that stuck out for me:
- “People commenting on SEO 2.0 are truly contributing.”
This is great as it adds value to your blog and your readership.
- “I even rank for long tail queries that are found only in my comments.”
This is a real bonus for yourself and you reward the commenters with a do follow link that will pass some link juice to their site.
But with everything in life, there will always be people who want to abuse the system. But from reading your article, I guess you know how to deal with them!
I never thought about blog commenting like a BBQ party before but I can see how it makes perfect sense! Thanks for the net etiqquete lesson I will track back :)
Samith
This is the first time some webmaster has shown his inside feelings after enabling dofollow rel.. :) Well many of people just comment for the sake of backlink and few are genuine. Now its upto you how you classify them..However i like Barbecue Party analogy..Best of luck!!
Nice analogy. As owner of more than a couple blogs, it drives me crazy when people post blog spam. My biggest problem at the blog BBQ is the drunk guy that keeps repeating himself. I have a few problem children that, no matter how many times I spam them, keep coming back and posting the exact same thing.
This article has been overdo for a very long time. The netiquette guidelines are superb. It helped me crystallize some things I need to do and NOT do. It’s win/win if people are smart enough to understand that eventually if you spam the #$@! out of blogs it will ruin it for everyone. (I saw a blog today that had one post with over 75 links in it — I’m not exaggerating.) I have to admit, I’ve spammed some high-ranking blogs before but I have to say I felt guilty about doing it. I didn’t do a lot, maybe 10 at the most, but karma got the best of me when I started getting like 10-15 spam posts a day on one of my blogs, though. The guidelines here are very sensible.
I love this article! I have a DoFollow blog, and I can’t begin to tell you the amount of ridiculous spam comments.
One of my blogs got spammed to death, I forgot to enable the comment approval system :/ I don’t think No-Follow or Do-Follow really matters to spammers.
Ahh, I see what you did with #4, a little bit of controversy to spice thing up ;-)
Hi,
It’s a little sad to me that netiquette guides like these even have to exist. I think a lot of it comes down to the desire for backlinks and higher SERPS. People forget that they’re soliciting another human being when they comment – it’s just ‘Oh! Domain Link juice! Oh! Domain! Link juice!’ for eternity. Eesh!
Thanks!
Pete @ Pure FX
Hi everyone :-)
Great read, the comments make it even better too! Have any bloggers noticed any difference in spam since Google (well, Matt Cutts) confirmed the dofollow status 18 months ago ish?
This is a very good post on how to write professional, clean comments.
Thank you for your hints!
I was just thinking of removing the nofollow attribute myself. It’s a vote of confidence to the readers, giving them something back for contributing. Of course, I’m not referring to one-liners or hit-you-in-the-face spam.This article has been overdo for a very long time. The netiquette guidelines are superb. It helped me crystallize some things I need to do and NOT do. It’s win/win if people are smart enough to understand that eventually if you spam the #$@! out of blogs it will ruin it for everyone.
i hate people who post with a link and then another in signature – as you say they are greedy :)
Actually, according to my test during last 3 years, no-follow links are also very important, even for google, not to say yahoo and bing.
Your “netiquette” bullet points above the “Post a Comment” form sum things up nicely. The only thing I may disagree with a bit is the idea that if you make your site “do follow” you’ll likely get more favorable comments. I don’t think a little disagreement and alternative points of view detract from a post or site at all. Actually, I think it is a good thing. Makes for a more robust conversation and open minded platform.
Hey from few days ago i had installed Do Follow Plug ins. Its really works. i can see benefit of installing Do Follow Plug in.
Thanks for writing such a nice article. Keep it up..
So funny Aaron Wall gets flagged as spam.. Guess it shows how much input he actually contributes to across the blogosphere. Akismet can easily pick up false positives based on user comment volume.
as a beginner seo i used to post the commnet by just putting hi and thanks… but somehow i came on this blog and i don’nt know but somehow i read you post . and now i don’t forget to read the post before i put my view ….so not a big ….but a small thanks…..( as you don’t like the thanks …)
Everyone thinks that do follow or no follow links make a huge difference. In fact, this isn’t the case. the truth is the harder the link the better. You don’t have to re-create the wheel when doing a Seo. You just have to follow the guidelines.
Great article for any Internet marketer just starting out.
I have a blog. I had been receiving comments that had no connection with the posts. Being a technically-retarded person I never knew why was I getting such comments or SPAMS (as I know now). Reading this post made it all clear to me.
I use do-follow links on my website as well. It’s time we started spreading the link authority around on smaller blogs so that we can compete with the bigger brands in online marketing.
Very Nice barbeque! I loved it. Your post is an eye opener for spammers. For getting link people do weird things like ‘seo company’ keyword for children blogs.
Thanks:)
Loved your product example, Dirt Devil … made me laugh.
I do get a sprinkling of human spam on my blogs – poor English, non-sense … I used to check the url to see if they were linking to a professional website but taking too long. I now look for something intelligent and then I try to visit their blog and reciprocate.
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